Tuesday Talk: How will budget cuts affect MN jobs?

March 15, 2011
By
Joe Sheeran, Communications Director

Conservatives campaigned on a jobs platform. Yet their budget cuts would have a detrimental impact on the public entities that help create private sector jobs, including massive slashes to higher education, the department of economic development and transportation.

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10 Comments:

KJC says:

March 15, 2011 at 8:32 am

I wish it would “work.” We were sold this in the Reagan days, that tax cuts would bring jobs. Later, Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman repudiated all that, and admitted it was just a convenient ruse for political justification.
It was based on the Laffler curve, which indicates that, at some point, if taxes are high enough people might choose not to work. He has since clarified that, saying it only applies to very high income individuals… people who have so much money that they don’t actually need to work in the first place. How many Americans does that apply to percentage wise? I know very few people who don’t need to work to survive.
Actually the macro-evidence is contrary. Taxes were very high in the 50’s and 60’s and we also had very high employment. We’ve been cutting taxes for the last 30 years… so if “tax cuts spurred job growth” we should be drowning in jobs by now, wouldn’t we? Instead the opposite has occurred, we are in the worst employment situation since the Great Depression.
So looking at the recent direct results, as the would work out for the average American, the idea that “tax cuts will leading directly to more jobs” is a sham argument. I wish it weren’t so, because it would be “easy,” then.
Tax cuts leave the wealthy with more. That’s the only sure outcome. Will they make jobs here with it? That seems very unlikely, doesn’t it, looking at the actual results and trends? Will they spend it to open up plants overseas? That seems far more likely, indeed that is what has occurred over the last 20-30 years.
Nice to have our tax cuts help make more jobs for some other country? That’s the nobody-wants-to-talk-about-it story of the recent decades. Again, I don’t like it any more than you do. I’m with the old adage on this: “one definition of insanity it doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result this time.” We’ve tried, and tried, and tried tax cuts to the wealthy, hoping that it would work ... hoping for the promised jobs. Looking around, seeing the worst US job market since the Great Depression, there is NO logical reason to think it will finally work to bring American jobs “this time.” Yes, the author of that common sense phrase, Einstein, had it right, as usual.

The GOP doesn’t care what the negative impact on jobs will be…. they only care about making sure the rich 2%ers don’t pay the the same percentage of their income that the middle class taxpayers pay. Preserving regressive taxes is the first and only priority of the GOP, both in Minnesota and nationally, even though the richest 2% of Americans are the most lightly- taxed wealthy class of any developed country on earth.

In addition, the wealthiest 2% are in many cases receiving public subsidies. One of the Cargills (or MacMillans) was the biggest recipient of federal ag subsidies in the state of MN in 2009 along with Glen Taylor who is now asking for more public subsidies to renovate the Target Center.

You don’t hear any Republicans talking about how we have to rein in the pork that goes to these billionaires. No, the Republicans only stand tall when they can whack the poor public school teacher who is making $30,000 a year.

I think the Republican political emphasis has almost everything else in mind, but jobs. Economic experts assert the Republican budget plan will cost anywhere from 600,000 to 1,000,000 jobs. And as Speaker Boehner would say, “So be it.” Even the newly elected Republican governors are causing their states to hemorhage jobs. The estimates for WI and MI are for large jobs losses, all because of the emphasis to protect tax cuts for the rich and corporations.

Republicans campaigned on job, jobs, jobs, but that couldn’t be further fromt he truth. Instead, Repbulicans are consolidating political power, like in Michigan, where the Governor can literally fire any local elected official he wants. In WI the governor is giving enormous tax cts to corporations, already taxed at a low rate. He is in the process of laying off thousands of state employees, including thousands in an already stressed educational system.

People must begin to take our government back. The Tea Party and its ilk are destroying our country. Tax cuts for the rich don’t equate to jobs. Also, why has the Repbulican party wasted all this time to date, regulating abortion, gun right, immigration, repealing health care reform, and consolidating power in our political system, if they care about jobs?

It is abundantly clear that Speaker Zellers and his GOP brethren are completely focused on an agenda they believe Tea Party support will capture the Governor’s chair in the next election, regardless of the consequences. The budget cuts proposed represent an ideological nuclear bomb that will bring real economic devastation far exceeding the effects of a deficit. Voters get what they deserve.

Right on. the GOP won in 2010 largely with the mantra of “jobs, jobs, jobs” and the unemployment rate which “horrified” them.

Once in office, their sole objective seems to be to repeal social issues which are offensive to their right wing supporters. Not only do most of these issues not create jobs…are not related to “jobs”...but many are a negative drag on job creation.

It is a pathetic combination of hypocrisy and caving in to to the basest elements in the Republican Party.

I don’t think the republicans tried and tried and tried to create jobs with their tax cuts for the rich. They just wanted to give tax cuts to the rich. Job creation is just a sham. As has been noted here, they don’t seem to have any interest in job creation now, but are focused on conservative social issues.
They don’t seem to have any other plan for “job creation” except cutting taxes on the rich. I am sure they know that’s failed, but they have been successful in giving more money to the rich.
And I can’t understand why more people can’t see the evidence in front of them. Why vote these people in?

Most programs cuts being considered at both federal and state levels affect activities that are fairly job intensive, so reducing or eliminating funding for these programs equates to eliminating jobs.

I like to use something called my JEI or “Jobs Elimination Indicator”. It works like this:

I assume a job is $100,000 – this isn’t take-home pay; it’s both a base pay of about $60,000 plus fringe benefit costs plus the indirect costs often charged on state or federal funds - they indirectly support other jobs.

So, for easy calculating, at $100,000 a job:

- a $1 million cut = 10 jobs

- a $10 million cut = 100 jobs

- a $100 million cut = 1,000 jobs

Most discussions, both at the federal and state levels, tend to be about billions of dollars.

It’s just going to make a bad situation worse. The Republicans have no plan that creates meaningful jobs. They’ve been talking the same way for 30 years. The only jobs that are being created are those that pay minimum wage. And when they say unemployment is down it just means that some people have run out of unemployment benefits. Thanks to that great icon(ha!) Ronald Wilson Reagan(reads PUTZ!) the current Republicans are still singing the same tune. His trickle down economics never worked and never will work. And writing IOUs to Social Security to hide the fact doesn’t do anything but bankrupt Social Security. Why should the Republicans in office care, they have a guaranteed retirement package. Keeping the tax cuts in place only makes the rich richer, not create new jobs or keep Social Security solvent. It’s the same with dismantling regulatory and environmental protections. They say that companies can police themselves, but it will be just like the tax cuts, they’ll exploit it any way they can. I don’t who they think they’re kidding.

P.S. Isn’t that Michelle Bachmann just a hoot. I meant to say an embarrassment!